Story:The Distance Within Us
---- Synopsis The year is 2114. The human civilizations of Earth, fresh from the physical scars of an extraterrestrial conflict, now contend with the ideological aftermath. The mechanical Rorqual descended from the skies in 2027, narrowly avoiding both extinction at the hands of their hosts and inflicting that same fate in turn. After nearly a hundred years of conflict, shaky compromise, and scientific ascension, human and Rorqual, splintered into factions, still walk the tightrope between peace and war. A covert plan to send a fleet of spaceships to a habitable moon is internationally conceived, aiming to unite the capability of humanity with the technology of the Rorqual. To make this idea a reality, the aliens themselves, and thus human capable of communicating with them, are required. Guarded, rational, of clear mind - this is the formula required of ROCs: those who possess the delicate gift of speaking with those who devour souls. Directory *Characters *Tracklist Short Works *''Pentecost \ Loy Krathong'' *''The Last Words of Haruka Homura'' Map Nations Asia Korea Stretching along the entirety of the Joseon Penninsula, Korea is one of the most densely populated countries in the world, and a hub of scientific innovation and statecraft. Korea can be considered an ironic "success story" of the Descent; confronted by a common alien threat, it emerged from the Descent unified and resilient. The capital, Seoul, hosts the current headquarters of the Concordat of Nations. Saegkhal 8, Korea's foremost privately-owned aeronautics company, landed the first spacecraft on Earth's second and third moons. Both entities employ a strong working relationship with select Rorqual. Japan When the majority of the Americas fell to the cruelest factions of the Descent, Japan suddenly found itself a key border vanguard against the Rorqual. Japan's value was not necessarily its military force - an arena mostly shouldered by Siberia, the Philippines, and the competing Chinese states - but its breakthrough research in communication with the alien species. Its scholars were granted time by the sacrifices of allies and the vast, deserted Pacific. After decades of studies on the battlefront and with Rorqual willing to coexist with humanity, the two species were bridged together in voice. Japan has since been among the foremost advocates of Human-Rorqual cooperation, a sentiment spread throughout much of East and Southeast Asia. There are still many, however, for whom the Descent's pain extinguished any belief in such a harmony. Siam Siam is one of the few nations to retain a system of monarchy into the 22nd century. Its kings are religious and political icons at a time when the royals of Europe and Western Asia have long since been reduced to mere secular figureheads. The current monarch, Rama XIV, presides at a time of somehow greater instability than that of his predecessors. As parliaments dissolve and reform among perennial coups, the Siamese look to him for guidance. Never a premier world power, yet shielded from the worst horrors of the Descent, Siam now stands as a potential beacon of hope for the masses yearning to see freely. Philippines Three hundred years of Hispanization, four decades of Japanese occupation, and preceding millennia of jumbled, clashing tribal identities have crafted the Philippines into a country disparate like no other. A young republic at the advent of the Rorqual appearance, the Philippines were an easy target for those of the alien race that favored infiltration over diplomacy. Because of this occupation, the country views the aliens with far more cynicism than most of their Asian-Pacific neighbors. Qatna The Khalifah of Qatna at its peak was the global center of agricultural, medical, and astronomical learning in a medieval age when the pygmy states of Europe remained locked in feudal squabbles. From its seat of power across the Levant and Arabian Peninsula, the khalifah served as the primary source of religious and scientific education, building universities in states stretching from Morocco to Persia. Through a system of power-sharing and gentle cultural blending yielding to tolerance, Qatna cemented relationships in a fashion more enduring than war. Secure in its constellation of alliances, it furthered its mastery of the sciences into the modern age. Qatnan scholars were the first to behold the surfaces of the moons like pearls before their eyes. They elevated solar and nuclear power to peak efficiencies and created the first rudimentary artificial intelligence. This proficiency did not go unnoticed by the descending Rorqual. The aliens quickly determined which facilities on Earth were able to detect their approach, and astronomers at the Jabal Umm ad Dami Observatory had precious few minutes to alert the world of First Contact before they were obliterated by a orbital strike. In the early years of the Descent, the soon-wasteland of the Levant was a crucial battleground, as humans scrambled for until-then neglected fossil fuels to sustain their resistance. Successful anti-Rorqual combat operations in Muscat, Baghdad, and Cairo in the late 2030's were spearheaded largely by neighboring countries, supported by Qatnan logistics. These events persuaded certain factions of Rorqual to consider peace with humanity, a process soon accelerated by the foundation of the first ROCs. It is a testament to the Qatnan mindset that those driven from their lands at the war's onset returned swiftly to reestablish their home. From the seeds of the first Euphratic crops sown in years grew once more the khalifah in all its glory. Geographically the center of the developed world, Qatna attempts, fittingly, to act as a sort of diplomatic glue in the present-day Concordat of Nations. Within a compressed period of time it experienced Rorqualian devastation and Rorqualian mercy; it was rescued as a state by neighboring nations it could claim credit for sustaining throughout history. Considering the khalifah's generally nuanced positions, it came as a shock to many when it wholeheartedly endorsed participation in Triune - a project intended to send human-staffed spacecraft to the outer moons of Earth. India Tibet Imperial China Republic of China Mongolia Yakutia Europe Ruthenia From the mangled corpse of Europe's trinity of world wars rises the relatively young nation-state of Ruthenia, a Commonwealth whose aspirations border on Empire. While the United States and Middle East were the primary targets of the Descent, the Rorqual soon turned their attention to the nuclear arsenals of Great Britain and France, initially overcoming every resistance. Eventually, the aliens overreached - occupied with subsuming the Americas and suffering losses they were incapable of recuperating, they splintered into factions. One of these attempted to replicate the American victory with a European one. It did, until driven back at the old city of Warsaw. This was the Descent's first turning point in humanity's favor, and an event that the leaders of Ruthenia very much want the world to remember. The Commonwealth currently stretches from the Baltic to the Mediterranean, but it was not always so. As the surviving countries of Europe, mostly cocooned around the Black Sea, fought back against their invaders, they quickly assimilated lands and people who years before had been subjugated - yet not eradicated - by the Rorqual. Far more died in the struggle to reclaim Europe compared to the initial Descent upon London, Paris, and Berlin. For many, this was not a gift of liberation, not when the impetus of the entire continent was to fight on, without end, until every last serpent had been driven out. Europe was not entirely successful in this endeavor, settling for coexistence rather than eradication after decades of difficult struggle. To this day Rorqual enjoy influence in diminished, still-recovering states such as Spain, Ireland, and England. They do not, however, in Ruthenia. Those that endured extinction surpassing even the trenches of Verdun and gashouses of Auschwitz did not forgive easily. Those at the threshold of control, caught most severely in the crossfire of shifting war tides, were those that would never forget. So Warsaw, Prague, Bucharest, Kiev, and many more joined together to ensure that Europe would no longer be hostage to the demands of machines. Such was the intention, anyway. For those countries that resist the idea of resistance, Ruthenia's intentions are of paramount concern. Estonia Africa French Algeria :"Article I: Men are born free to oppose injustice. :Article II: The goal of any political organization is the conservation of justice and the eradication of injustice. :Article III: The principle of any sovereignty stems from Work, Family, and the Fatherland. All polities that seek to promote injustice and destroy sovereignty, whether they be human or alien, shall garner no mercy." :— Excerpt from the Declaration of the Rights of Human, 2045 AD The Algerian War could have ended worse for both sides. The 1962 Treaty of Rabat lost France the vast majority of their colonies, but, due to a popular wave of support in the Metropolitan, France manage to obtain the terms of population exchange in Northern Algeria, where the white settlers, the pieds-noirs, remain, along with Algerian loyalists, in a small strip of the northern part of the country. As mainland Europe lay devastated after the three World Wars, France shifted her axis of power to Northern Africa. Millions of displaced Frenchmen settled along the fertile coasts and created replicas of the Europe they lost, from the Arcs to the towers to the art and music. Strolling down the streets of Algiers, one would might confuse them for Paris a hundred years hence. African Arab Union :"My country strange, my Arab people, :The desert lands, only rivers our tears :I fight for freedom, human freedom :Regretting nothing but everything. :In the name of your love for me :Don’t dose the candles you kept burning :Don’t drink the stew you kept brewing :Sprinkle thorns on roads we used to walk :So only we may tread them." :— “Third Poem to a Love,” Abdul Hafez al-Hakem, 2074 AD. France’s continued claim to Northern Africa results in the former French colonies banding together in 1964 under the banner of the African Arab Union, with the capital centered in Tunis. The country’s presidential system similar to that of France, where people elect president and each of the constituent states sent representatives for the legislature, is more democratic in theory than in practice. The union is tenuous: the wealthier northern states control most of the economy thus the political power. The southern states, ruled by an Arab minority over a black African majority, suffer from constant ethnic violence and resentment against Northern aggression. The Concordat of Nations has failed to bridge tensions in the south of the country, which have only increased as the Rorqual destabilized the world. France and the AAU are locked in an eternal border struggle over the last one hundred and fifty years, with both trying to regain supremacy over Northern Africa. The attack of the Rorqual only heightened this war. Both countries claimed that they would better suited to defend Northern Africa against this alien invasion. The citizens of the two respective capitals, Algiers and Tunis, have become used to frequent air raids and bomb threats by the other country. The trauma has made them grow cynical and world-weary. Movements supporting the Rorqual have sprung up throughout Northern Africa and were all brutally suppressed each time. Morocco Ghanan Confederacy Ghana declares peaceful independence in 1957, the first colonized African nation to throw off the shackles of colonialism. Its leader, Kwame Nkrumah, has a vast vision of a vast African union, free of any European colonialism. He wants to lead by example, showing the other fledging African nations that an independent Africa can flourish under African leaders. His ideas for Pan-Africanism at least attract the interest of much of former British Western Africa, and the leaders agree to form a tenuous trade union in 1961. Over the next 40 years, the country grows in size; many central African nations, afraid of the growing power of the UASR to the southeast, join the Ghanan Confederation for protection, hoping that lenient rule from Accra will be more tolerable than the iron fist of Arusha. The Ghanan Union provides much of the natural resources for the rest of the world due to its fertile tropical climate, and the remaining countries see it in their best interest to keep it stable. The destruction of much of the breadbasket of the Middle East and America by the Descent only increases the vital nature of Ghana to the rest of the world. The country doesn’t quite flourish - the leaders still pocket most of the economic wealth leaving the mostly agrarian population out in the cold - but it manages to stay together for the next hundred and fifty years with minor political strife. The ninety constituent states, mostly drawn using tribal and ethnic lines, maintain relative peace in an uncertain continent. United African Socialist Republics In 1961, the former British colonial of Tanganyika declared independence. Its leader was the citizen-president Julius Nyerere, a former doctor, who became famous through his non-violent protest against colonialism, modeled on Gandhi. One of his conditions of independence was that the nearby colonials of Kenya, Uganda and Zanzibar would join Tanganyika in a country called the East African Federation. While initially a democratic institution, the Federation turns sour as Nyerere quickly begins to consolidate power. He purges the leadership of the other countries in the union and replaces them with puppet leaders. Renaming the East African Union to the United African Socialist Republics, Nyerere appointments himself as Premier for Life. The newly Christian UASR bows to the philosophy of ujamaa, which stresses African self-reliance, free social, educational and health services to all citizens, and absolute fealty to Nyerere. Under his rule and his successors, the UASR wages a harsh war of “African Reunification” against the smaller independent states, culminating in a brutal war in the Congo that leaves millions dead. In the mid 2010s, the UASR eventually ends an era of nearly sixty years of warfare to focus on finally implementing welfare aspects of ujamaa, with mixed success, especially due to the Rorqual interruption. Through a system of heavy taxation and wealth redistribution, social services and healthcare are extended to all in theory. However, the standard of living in Tanganyika proper is a world of difference from that in the outer Republics, with many still not even having proper running water. This is less a feature of hostility and more of negligence; the UASR bureaucracy is a difficult and dangerous thing to negotiate, and even the simplest infrastructure projects in the outer regions are difficult to fund. Arusha, meanwhile, is one of the largest and most prosperous cities in the world, and a cultural and entertainment hub in Africa. It is easy to forget that a single wrong word might spirit you away in the night, never to be seen by family and friends again. Africa’s main space program is based here, in Nairobi, the technological capital of the UASR. It serves as Africa’s main hub of defense against the aliens, in addition to the UASR’s enormous military, considered to be one of the strongest in the world. The UASR maintains chilly relations with all of its neighbors; the old wounds of war are not easily forgotten. Union of South Africa and Rhodesia :"BY ORDER OF THE SECRETARY-GENRAL :The City of Johannesburg restricts the use of this bench to :PEOPLE OF WHITE RACE ONLY :All Colored, Black, Asian, Alien, or other subspecies may not use :Under a minimum punishment of 20 years hard labor :THANK YOU, and have a great day!” :—Written on a shard of wood recovered after the Johannesburg Riots, 2092. South Africa and Rhodesia were a group of loosely collected British and Dutch settler states at the southern part of the continent. South Africa peacefully seceded from Great Britain in the early 20th century, much earlier than rest of Africa, for a simple reason: white apartheid rule. These were cruel states based on inequality and oppression that required a large slave class to work in the mines, fields, and farms for the benefit of the educated city dwelling white elites in the capitals of Cape Town and Salisbury. As Africa became coalesce under pan-African rule, both nations worriedly further consolidated the apartheid system by creating union of white settler states that would defend against what they believed to be an encroaching threat of Black Africa. They integrated the sympathetic Portuguese settler colonies of Mozambique and Angola and set up Bechuanaland as a neutral buffer state. South Africa and Rhodesia claim that all the occupied territory are independent states, but few outside observers are fooled. Because of the destruction of the United States due to the descent and the balkanization of the USSR, South Africa received little to no international pressure to change its grotesque system, especially due to its importance in microchip and spacefaring technology production. After the assassination of ANC key leaders in the late 1970s, South Africa kept its grip on the Apartheid system. The Descent allowed the white leaders to claim that Apartheid was a protective system, necessary in a harsh world. Rather than divide, Apartheid brought people closer together as a method to fight the alien invaders. However, as one might expect, such solipsism fell mostly on death ears. South Africa is a brutal and repressive regime that rules less through law and through terror. A tiny minority of the population benefits as the rest suffers. Frequent terror attacks, coupled with the general unproductivity of unhappy workers, leads to a stagnant and shaky economy, despite the necessity of its production. By 2114, the Union is on its last legs due to increasing military pressure from the UASR and population loss to Maputo. It is often called the "Sick Man of Africa," both due to its political weakness and its unappealing philosophy. Bechuanaland A sparsely populated buffer state between South Africa and the UASR, Bechuanaland is sparsely populated savanna. While ostensibly a puppet state of South Africa, Bechuanaland maintains some minor degree of autonomy. Although its minerals and produce are always exported directly to Cape Town for the lowest possible prices, Bechuanaland has escaped the horrors of Apartheid. Bechuanalanders take great pride in their fauna which it protects with an iron fist. Poachers are rarely spared the death penalty and border guards will violently search all possession on entry and exit to the country. The government Bechuanaland has sworn that if the Rorqual ever arrive, they would rather the entire country dies before the aliens take a single elephant. Free Republic of Maputo An unrecognized state to the east of South Africa, the Free Republic of Maputo, used the chaos of the Descent to declare independence in 2032 from the Apartheid state. South Africa may be an economic powerhouse, providing much of the precious minerals needed to create spacecrafts and complicated computing, but it is not a military one; its population is mostly unwilling to fight for its unjust wars, and its small special forces, while well trained and equipped, were too focused on the alien threat to reclaim the breakaway state. The Free Republic may not experience the wealth of its neighbors, but they experience a peaceful democratic rule. They are a safe haven from the domineering UASR and the cruel South Africa. They welcome refugees from both nations, brushing off threats from their two larger neighbors. It is a country most unaffected by the scars of African war and the horrors of intergalactic battles.